Alexander Campbell The Christian System: CS - 73-Breaking the Loaf - Introduction

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Alexander Campbell The Christian System: CS - 73-Breaking the Loaf - Introduction


Subjects in this Topic:

Breaking the Loaf

•        
Proposition I.

•         Proposition II.

•         Proposition III.

•         Proposition IV. 		•         Proposition V.

•         Proposition VI.

•         Proposition VII.

•         Objections and Answers


Breaking the Loaf

Man was not made for the Christian institution; but the Christian Institution for man. None but a master of the human constitution--none but one perfectly skilled in all the animal, intellectual, and moral endowments of man, could perfectly adapt an institution to man in reference to all that he is, and to all that he is destined to become. Such is the Christian Institution. Its evidences of a divine origin increase and brighten in the ratio of our progress in the science of man. He who most attentively and profoundly reads himself, and contemplates the picture which the Lord of this Institution has drawn of him, will be most willing to confess, that man is wholly incapable of originating it. He is ignorant of himself, and of the race from which he sprang, who can persuade himself that man, in any age, or in any country, was so far superior to himself as to have invented such an Institution as the Christian. That development of man, in all his natural, moral, and religious relations, which the Great Teacher has given, is not farther beyond the intellectual powers of man, than is the creation of the Sun, Moon, and Stars beyond his physical strength.

The eye of man cannot see itself; the ear of man cannot hear itself; nor the understanding of man discern itself: but there is one who sees the human eye, who hears the human ear, and who discerns the human understanding. He it is, who alone is skilled in revealing man to himself, and himself to man. He who made the eye of man, can he not see? He who made the ear of man, can he not hear? He who made the heart of man, can he not know?

It is as supernatural to adapt a system to man, as it is to create him. He has never thought much upon his own powers, who has not seen as much wisdom on the outside, as in the inside of the human head. To suit the outside to the inside, required as much wisdom as to suit the inside to the outside, and yet the exterior arrangement exists for the interior. To fashion a casement for the human soul exhibits as many attributes of a creator, as to fashion a human spirit for its habitation. Man, therefore, could as easily make himself, as a system of religion to suit himself. It will be admitted, that it calls for as much skill to adapt the appendages to the human eye, as the human eye to its appendages. To us it is equally plain, that it requires as much wisdom to adapt a religion to man, circumstanced as he is, as to create him an intellectual and moral being.

But to understand the Christian Religion, we must study it; and to enjoy it, we must practice it. To come into the kingdom of Jesus Christ is one thing, and to live as a wise, a good, and a happy citizen is another. As every human kingdom has its constitution, laws, ordinances, manners, and customs; so has the kingdom of the Great King. He, then, who would be a good and happy citizen of it, must understand and submit to its constitution, laws, ordinances, manners, and customs.